1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for detecting and responding to an outbreak of contagious diseases. More specifically, the present invention provides a proximity method and system for monitoring individuals through identification devices embedded in pagers, cell phones, or similar devices from which infected individuals can be notified and advised to seek immediate medical care.
2. State of Technology
Current surveillance systems and methods to prevent the outbreak of contagious diseases rely on post-symptomatic reporting, and therefore are severely limited in what portion of the population they can treat or isolate before infection becomes widespread and uncontrollable. In general, individuals are most infectious when they first begin to develop symptoms. Vaccinations work if the vaccine is available to the individual before infection and the prevalence of the disease warrants the risks associated with the vaccine's side effects. Therefore, a surveillance solution to prevent diseases transmitted by person-to-person interaction before the specific disease becomes epidemic is greatly desired.
Background information on an existing technology that relies on positional context information between people and inanimate objects, i.e., to detect a user's presence in the proximity of a specific physical entity, is contained in “Websigns: Hyperlinking Physical Locations to the Web”, by Pradhan et al., IEEE Computer, Vol. 34, Number 8 (August 2001), pp. 42-46, including the following: “[b]y using a simple form of augmented reality, the system allows users to visualize service related to physical objects of interest.” Additional information on context aware systems is contained in “Location Awareness in Community Wireless LANs”, by Fersha et al., Workshop, GI/ÖCG-Jahrestagung 2001, Vienna, Austria, September 2001, including the following: “we have extended the collection and exploitation of awareness information from the users physical activities in the campus workspace, like movement within and among offices or lecture halls, walking among buildings on campus, etc. Using a combination of IEEE 802.11 WLAN and RFID tagging technologies for enhanced position tracking of mobile devices thus allows for a seamless integration of user activities aside the interaction with desktop computing facilities into a shared virtual workspace opening a whole new dimension of awareness abilities.”
Various existing tracking systems are capable of monitoring the presence of people or assets. Background information on such a system can be found in, “Ekahau—The Most Accurate Location in Wireless Networks”. Ekahau, Inc. 2000-2002 Available: http://www.ekahau.com, including the following: “Ekahau Positioning Engine (EPE) is a powerful Java-based positioning server that provides PC and PDA location coordinates (x, y, floor) and tracking features to client applications.”
Background information on a system and method that utilizes peer-to-peer proximity measurements together with a known geographical position can be found in, U.S. Pat. No. 6,473,038 B2, titled “Method and Apparatus for Location Estimation,” issued Oct. 28, 2002 to Patwari et al., including the following: “a system and method operate to provide location estimates for mobile devices. The system does not require a great deal of installed infrastructure. Moreover in the case of urban canyons and inside buildings where there are numerous obstructions to the propagation of signals (e.g., GPS signals), the system is able to function to provide location information for devices that might otherwise be out of range.”
Accordingly, the present invention provides a solution for preventing outbreaks of contagious diseases by a method and apparatus for monitoring person-to-person interactions.